AP Photo/David DupreyLee Evans may be jumping for joy that he is no longer a Buffalo Bill. But Marv Levy, the former Buffalo head coach, believes the Bills are going to miss him.

Syracuse, N.Y. -- As he is an Ivy League man who lives in a world with room for both Tennessee Williams and the Tennessee Titans, Marv Levy is plenty smart enough. But that intellect hasn’t made him particularly bold in the ways of the omniscient. Rather, it seems to have inspired prudence on the forecasting front.

“Making predictions is easy,” Levy said the other day. “Being right is the hard part. So I’m waffling on the question of whether or not there is a bright future ahead.”

He’d been asked about the Buffalo Bills, a rumored member of the National Football League, during a recent telephone conversation. And as Marv once upon a gilded time had guided that outfit into the playoffs (and to four straight Super Bowls) in eight of his 11½ campaigns as their head coach, he seemed a logical source.

Still, he more or less demurred. Levy knows that the Bills have had a single winning season in their last 11, a blip at 9-7 in 2004. And he understands, too, that you have to board the Way-Back Machine and return to 1995 before you’ll find a playoff victory for the woebegone Buffalo organization.

But Marv was taught as a child how impolite it was to dance across a grave. And so, even though he could’ve stomped upon the Bills in their state of repose, Levy didn’t. Which isn’t to suggest that he was entirely without opinion.

“I don’t know all of the inner workings,” Levy offered during a telephone conversation from his home in Chicago. “I don’t know what’s going on with the salary cap and that stuff. I can’t say that I’ve been studying the Buffalo situation. But I’ve been stunned a little bit by some of the players who’ve been sent along their way.

“Paul Posluszny. Lee Evans. Donte Whitner. Trent Edwards. I’ve been surprised by the constant turnover of some pretty good people who are no longer there. You can’t keep changing, changing and changing without disrupting. It has stunned me that the Bills have done so much along those lines.”

The numbers -- and they include the conga line of coaches who’ve succeeded Levy since he walked away from the sideline following the 1997 campaign (Wade Phillips, Gregg Williams, Mike Mularkey, Dick Jauron and Chan Gailey) -- indicate that Buffalo’s strategy has had its flaws. And with the New England Patriots and New York Jets more than just a few furloughs ahead in the AFC East, there is little relief in sight.

So, yeah, the Bills’ past performance (i.e., a cumulative 70-106 record over these past 11 campaigns after having gone 123-78, including the playoffs, under Levy) does likely indicate future results. At least in the immediate future that begins this afternoon in Kansas City where the Chiefs are favored by a touchdown to extend that current Buffalo schneid to 70-107 in the NFL season opener for both clubs.

“I point this out a lot,” said Levy, who may not be the most interesting man in the world, but is pretty darn impressive, anyway, at the age of 86. “Peyton Manning was 3-11 as a rookie. Troy Aikman was 1-15 as a rookie. Terry Bradshaw was 2-12 as a rookie. Brett Favre was let go by Atlanta. Steve Young was let go by Tampa Bay. The lesson here? Stand by your guy. Now, don't get me wrong. I do like Ryan Fitzpatrick, but Trent Edwards was a pretty good guy.”

The source of the Bills’ sad predicament, of course, is not solely Fitzpatrick, who, like Levy, packs a Harvard degree (albeit, one earned more than a half-century later). Indeed, when it comes to its problems, this bunch has proven to be far more inclusive.

Last year's offense, for instance, was rated 25th in the 32-team league. Meanwhile, the defense, specifically the run defense which allowed nine different backs to rush for 100 yards or more, seemed to have followed the game plan drawn up by those folks at Charmin. The result was a record of 4-12 and a fattening of the ranks of those Western New Yorkers who pine for the good ol’ days when battered Buffalo was the butt of all those Super Bowl jokes.

Remember them? Remember when the Bills had to apologize for being 0-4 in the Super Bowl when so many other players (and teams) scattered throughout the league were 0-0?

Odd then. Odder now.

“I can’t say there’s a whole lot of good being 0-4 in the Super Bowl,” said Levy, the Hall of Fame coach whose critics insist should wear a kind of scarlet letter. “But I can tell you that there’s nothing good about never having gotten there. There’s only way to assure that you’ll never lose a Super Bowl. And that’s: Don’t go.”

These 2011 Bills -- and Kansas City, here they come -- appear primed to follow the man’s advice . . . which makes for an easy prediction, sure. In this case, though, there will probably be nothing hard about being right.

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(Coming Monday on syracuse.com: Marv Levy, the former Buffalo Bills’ coach, has become a published author. He talked with our Bud Poliquin about “Between the Lies,” his fictional novel that is scheduled to arrive in area bookstores later this week. In the meantime, Levy's book is available at www.amazon.com, www.bn.com and www.ascendbooks.com in addition to all popular e-book platforms, including I-pad, Kindle and Nook.)

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(Bud Poliquin's columns, “To The Point” observations and freshly-written on-line commentaries appear virtually every day on syracuse.com. His work can also be regularly found on the pages of The Post-Standard newspaper. Additionally, he can be heard Mondays through Fridays (10 a.m.-12 noon), on the "Bud & the Manchild" sports-talk radio show on The Score 1260-AM. E-mail: bpoliquin@syracuse.com.)